Monday, July 7, 2014

Planting leeks

In 2013 we planted 5,000 leeks by hand in the market garden. In 2014 we have just planted 15,000 leeks by tractor in our two maincrop fields. These should provide a succession of leeks from autumn to spring, of three varieties - Krypton (early-season), Pluston (mid-season) and Harston (late-season). The planting took a small team of people one and a half days, but the ground preparation (including collecting and spreading 5 trailer-loads of manure) took a week.

Spreading manure on the leek patch before rotovating it in.

Eva and Camille on the leek planter.

Jessie and Camille in action on the leek planter.

Pete and Jessie filling in gaps after the planter.

20 lines of leeks in the Four Acre Field.

Of course, the planter is not perfect (though it is very fast!), so walking the rows afterwards to push stray leeks into the ground, and to plug gaps where leeks are missing, is essential. Still a lot faster than planting by hand though.... We placed the leeks at 20cm apart in lines 50cm apart. Many thanks to Pete, Nikki, Jessie, Eva and Camille for taking their turns on the planter and walking the lines, and also to Anne, Jenny and Willow for taking over veg picking and egg-collecting duties on Thursday so we could concentrate on leeks.